Okay, so I’m a little behind on my updates. But I’ve got some pretty great adventures and stories to tell you about my last three weekends! The last weekend in January was spent out at Mount Maunganui with Sam, Jess and Dan as they were all competing at the Eastern Regional Championships for surf lifesaving. It was a huge competition, with a lot of different clubs there. It meant a whole weekend at the beach for me, which I’m not complaining about. I was team photographer/general moral support, a role I seem to have a lot these days. They all did very well! Jess made the final in the open women’s ski, Dan made the final in the open men’s ski and his sprint relay team won, and Sam made the final in the ironwoman! Which was a story. So the ironwoman is a race where you paddle board, swim and ski all in the same race. The order is randomly chosen at the start of the competition, so Sam’s order was swim, then paddle board, then ski. In her heat, she came out fourth in the swim, dropped back to the back in the board, and then in the transition to the ski she just stopped. Her coach came running over to her while her teammates and I were trying to figure out what had happened. I used my camera as binoculars and we figured it out: her ski was missing! There was no boat on the line for her because one of the other competitors had taken Sam’s boat instead of her own when her teammates hadn’t put her boat out for her! Needless to say, that girl was disqualified and Sam was put through to the final! And in the final she did very well, even with being super tired from all her other races that weekend! These races all took place during the day on Saturday and Sunday, but we had some adventure time in the evenings. On saturday evening, Dan and I went to this pizza place called The Library, which was SO COOL because all the pizzas are named after great works of literature. We ordered Moby Dick, which was super good. When we ordered, they had told us it would be a 25 minute wait. I always give another 10 minute buffer whenever someone says that, but about 45 minutes later we still didn’t have our food. I went in to check on it and was real nice about it because obviously I also am working in the foodservice industry and I hate it when people are mean when they’re complaining, especially because it’s usually not the fault of the person you’re complaining to! The woman I talked to apologized profusely and said it was coming out of the oven and she’d bring it over right away. Which she did, along with a free dessert pizza and a coupon for another free pizza valid for the next 6 months! It was so nice and definitely worth the extra wait. I made sure to tell her the pizza was amazing when we left. Sunday night we all went to the hot pools near the beach for a little relaxation. So nice. I hung around for a little on Monday to watch Dan compete at a regional competition and his region ended up winning the whole thing in the open category! Pretty neat. **Intermission while I work work work all week** The next weekend, I was supposed to have a waterpolo game on Saturday, but it was cancelled. Sad face. BUT that left plenty of time for adventures. On Saturday Dan and I went up to Whangamata to watch Richard take his life guard exam, which he naturally passed, yay! We stopped off at the gypsy fair that was there for a bit. We watched the man playing music for a bit, he was hilarious. At one point he said “Okay, let’s see if I can remember how to play this song…”, started to play, got about 10 chords in then just stopped and said “Nope, not going to work, next song.” It was so funny. On the way back to Waihi Beach we trekked out to Wentworth Falls, which was pretty neat. Waterfalls seem to be a trend over here, which I am loving. I cooked dinner for Dan and Richard that night and then we all went over to the surf club for a drink and to visit Sam who was working at the bar that night. Sunday was a pretty lazy day, we went to the farmer’s market, then tried to buy avocados but that was unsuccessful. Sunday night Dan and I played some card games after dinner before going to the pub to say goodbye to some of my friends that are leaving Waihi Beach now that summer is over and to see the band playing. They were real good! They played a bunch of covers, but they also played some of their own songs. Here is one of them that I like a lot, it’s called See In Colour. **Work work work** (But also have some cool work updates: I can now use the “pods” that can collect orders at tables so I can help out with table service, I was given a thumbs up for a cappuccino that I made, I had a nice long chat with an English couple about travel, and I met an American woman who lives in Florida and the first thing she said to me was “Can you believe there aren’t any Dunkin’ Donuts over here?!”. In my head I was thinking “I never go there slash there aren’t any in Minnesota anyways so there’s that”. Obviously I did not say that out loud.) This past week I left on Thursday afternoon to spend the weekend up in Auckland. I met Dan at the Auckland Zoo for a late night zoo stroll and it was awesome! My highlights were definitely the elephants, red pandas, and squirrel monkeys. My other highlight was Dan’s reaction when I said I have alligators in my backyard! Foreign concept, obviously. We also started our modeling careers that night. While hanging out with the rhino, a woman with the advertising team asked us if she could take our photo with the rhino in the background. Of course we said yes. And now we’re on their Facebook page! And she emailed me the photos later, which was cool too. I think we make a pretty good modeling team: me, Dan and the rhino. Friday I spent the day with Jess. We went to a few different beaches in Auckland, and we met up with Elena for a walk in the afternoon. I was also pulled over for driving too slow on the motorway, but thankfully I didn’t get a ticket. Never thought that would happen. And I was going the equivalent of less than 10 miles under the speed limit. So it’s not even that slow. Whatever, cross that one off the bucketlist. That night, Dan took me to Shakespeare in the Park to see The Tempest, which is my favorite Shakespeare play! It was so cool! I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Dan’s favorite thing ever, but I enjoyed it. And the actor who played Caliban involved me a little: he gave me a log to hold onto and then he came and took it back. That sounds so lame in that sentence but it was pretty funny at the time. Saturday Dan and I spent all day out at Bethells Beach. It’s one of the black sand beaches on the west coast, about an hours drive from Auckland. Dan was on jet ski patrol, so he took me out on it for a little and that was fun! While he had to go lifeguard, I walked around and took some photos. There was one really cool spot where the waves hit the rocks and the water shot into the air! I also tanned and took a nap, so that was nice and relaxing. Once he came back and had put the jetski away, we threw the frisbee around and then went for a walk into the sea caves at the end of the beach. It looks like there’s no entrance and then when you walk right up to the rock face, there’s an opening about the size of a doorway that you can walk through. It goes into a larger opening that has four different tunnels off of it. One is the one we walked through to get in, one goes out into a mini beach, one goes back into the hills behind the beach and the final one goes out to the sea. Its SUPER dark in that one and kind of scary because you can’t really see but you can hear the waves crashing into it. After we left the beach, we drove down the road for a bit and then went on a walk to a freshwater lake nearby. What’s neat about this lake is that it there is a huge sand dune right next to it/leading down to the water’s edge. And when I say huge, I mean ginormous. Hopefully the pictures I took will show you how big it was. But probably not. Dan and I ran down them a few times, check out the video! It was really cool and the lake was the perfect way to wash all the sand off. We finished the day with the sunset at Piha. The light was reflecting off the water perfectly and it made it twice as pretty! Sunday we lounged around, cooked some food, went to the beach for an hour and then went out to dinner with Dan’s dad. For mexican food, which was amazing; I’d been craving some! I drove back Monday morning and now I’m back on the working grind…..but there are always more adventures to come! stay tuned :)
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Meet AnyaHi, Hola, Bonjour, Ciao!
I’m Anya Phillips, a data analyst and travel enthusiast who is always on the lookout for the next adventure! Categories
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